September 2012Trade Show

Nicholas Hellmuth

Trade Show II

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Please Note

Copyright 2012

Contents

After-market Inks available in South Africa 3Jinan Apollo Ink 4Bordeaux 5Chromoink 5J Teck 5Kiian 6Marabu 6NUtec 7REXX Screen and Digital Supplies. 8SpecialColor 8Triangle INX 9Tulip ink 9Latex Inks, after-market 10Neon Ink 10Thermoformed ink 10Color Management 11Coaters and Laminators 11

*Each brand name is a hotlink.

Trade Show1

After-market Inks available in South AfricaThere are some brands of inks that have a distributor, but if they do not exhibit at Sign Africa with their own booth, and if they do not have presence in the main trade magazine for Sign Africa (Practical Publishing), then such an ink distributor is not significant enough to be listed at the same level as the companies below.

If we do not know the company, and if there is no easy way to find the company at a trade show booth, we have no realistic way to judge the company.

Last year, in the booth of one Mutoh dealer it was unclear what ink they offered. One person did not know the difference between eco-solvent and mild-solvent ink. And when I indicated that I had heard they used Tech Ink or NUtec, they were uncertain about this, or whether it was rebranded by Mutoh. So I simply gave up and concentrated on booths where they knew what ink sources they used. So we do not list MIPS as an ink distributor until we can get an understandable answer on who provides their Mild Solvent Ultra and who provides their Mild Solvent Plus.

In some countries after-market ink is everywhere. Here at Sign Africa there were indeed entire booths dedicated to ink, but the presence of inks was not as dominant as in other countries.

Trade Show 2

Jinan Apollo InkThis company is not noted for last year, but I would need to double-check to be sure. Apollo ink is a brand I see at all Chinese expos but because there are so many different ink companies we tend to focus on those which are the most accessible.

Apollo offers UV and UV-LED inks, in addition to inks for Epson and Seiko. It is worth noting that most Chinese printer manufacturers do not use Chinese ink. Probably two reasons: they are nervous that buyers in Europe and the Americas will not accept a Chinese ink, and they (the manufacturers in China) realize that some brands of UV-curable ink of reputable brand names are in fact more reliable than Chinese brands.

Jinan Apollo Ink booth

Trade Show3

BordeauxDistributed by GSW.

GSW gives Bordeaux its own sort of 3x3 meter space, which is more than most other distributors give to their inks. Fortunately I did not see any headlines about the supposed “latex” ink of Bordeaux. Most people at drupa 2012 said they did not accept the “latex” ink of Bordeaux as really an acceptable latex. There was so many unanswered questions that perhaps they figured it not worth it to claim this so loudly. I looked to see what they claimed about this ink on their web site, but it was totally down for renovation (the day after the expo).

www.gsw.co.za

GSW booth at SignAfrica 2012

Trade Show 4

KiianKiian and Manoukian are part of the same Italian group. Their logo was on the wall of the Sheetco booth.

www.kiian.com

MarabuMaraJet DI-LS, mild solvent; distributed by NSDS. By 2012 their booth had shrunk back into one corner. NSDS no longer exhibits any Dilli or D.G.I. printer. Two people said that NSDS was downsizing.

www.marabu-inks.comwww.Chemosol.co.za

ChromoinkI have met the key people of Chromoink at several trade shows, but have not been to their factory in Asia. I did not notice any of the company personnel in their distributor booth in 2012. The Chromoink brand logo was on the wall of the booth, which is actually more than some other ink brands get in the booth of their titular distributor.

Distributed by IMDM

www.chromoink.com

J TeckDye-sub ink is the only kind of J Teck ink offered by Roland of South Africa.

In the 2011 expo issue of Practical Publishing magazine there was a full-page ad for J TECK inks, which listed their distributor as TELPRO Management, Ltd. But TELPRO was nowhere listed as an exhibitor. And TELPRO has not been in my list of South African distributors (which I started in 2009). In other words, they (the distributor and the ink) are relatively non-present at trade shows. Or if they are present, they are invisible.

No listing for TELPRO in 2012.

www.j-teckusa.com

Trade Show5

NutecSomeone joked last year that NUtec ink was sold by twelve resellers. Falcon was one of these. NUtec is the ink company formed after Scitex Vision bought Tech Ink. Scitex Vision was subsequently purchased by HP, so Tech Ink is now part of HP. NUtec are simply the experienced folks at Tech Ink who were removed as Scitex Vision and then HP took over Tech Ink.

In 2012 Falcon had a long booth at the end of one of the halls. NUtec kind of had their own booth within the long narrow Falcon booth. There was the continuous Falcon billboard behind.

www.nutecdigital.com

Nutec booth at SignAfrica 2012

Trade Show 6

SpecialColor SpecialColor or SuperColour (I wrote down both names), DX ink, in booth of New Ideas Technologies.

So far we have not been able to find any web site for the distributor in South Africa. But I am writing this text in Moscow and do not have the exhibitor list from Sign Africa. If we find a web site we will update this..www.special-color.com for the ink company in China

REXX Screen and Digital SuppliesREXX offers ink from Fujifilm Sericol.

www.REXXScreenDigital.co.za

Special Color showing different types of samples on their booth.

Trade Show7

Triangle INXLast year, 2011, their brand name was on the wall of Sytech, but I did not see much evidence of their ink in the booth. This year (2012) if the Triangle brand name was anywhere I did not notice it. There are a lot of distributors who may handle an ink but often they don’t feature it very much (or very well) in their booth.

www.triangleink.com

Tulip inkDistributor from Dubai area (rebrands ink from various sources). Tulip had a mid-sized booth along the end wall in 2012.

www.tulipinks.com

Tulip booth located along the end wall of the tradeshow.

Trade Show 8

Bordeaux was in the GSW booth, but there was no blaring claim of them having an after-market latex ink. Most people in the industry who saw what Bordeaux claimed at drupa (that their latex ink was mix and match; pour it in and it works) was not accepted by most industry analysts. So I would imagine that the ink company is being careful about making this claim. There was sufficient disapproval by enough people in the industry that seemingly the message was received and understood.

To discuss this further you would need to have an accurate MSDS and REACH and have an ink chemist make their comments on whether that ink was acceptable under the rubric “latex ink.”

Neon InkI have been attending printer expos since the 1990’s. More or less every five years someone has introduced a neon ink. My few remaining memory cells from those years remember Encad and/or Roland (so one for thermal printheads and one for Epson printheads). I would have to go through over ten years of FLAAR Reports to check on the brand names.

But now Seiko is offering this kind of ink with their ColorPainter. I hope to have the opportunity to evaluate this ink in the future.

Latex Inks, after-market

Seiko Color Painter W-64s printing with neon ink.

Trade Show9

Thermoformed inkSouth Africa is the home to a solvent-based thermo-formed ink. Oce used this ink to create a dedicated printer for thermoforming. Of course this market is not large enough to support such a dedicated line of printers.

The manufacturer of the ink in South Africa is associated with Oce. But the Oce distributor (Sign-Tronic) does not mention the word thermo-forming on their web site!

The company Polytech Thermoforming uses Formech heat presses. What was unusual in 2012 was the ability to thermoform an object as large as a bathtub. I never saw that with solvent ink nine years ago nor with UV-cured ink ever.

www.sign-tronic.co.za

Oce exhibited Thermoformed ink samples at their booth.

Trade Show 10

Color ManagementPantone is color matching not color management.

Coaters and LaminatorsGSW offers traditional Chinese-made laminators.

I saw laminators in several other booths. I did not notice too many wide-format coaters, however. But there was a UV Coater Model 465 SP in the booth of RC, Ronnie Cox Graphic Supplies

First issued September 2012

Pantone booth at SignAfrcia 2012